The present invention relates to an electronic catalog data creating apparatus and more particularly to an electronic catalog data creating apparatus creating electronic parts-catalog data.
Conventionally, a parts maker has distributed paper catalogs to business firms and various manufacturers to provide them with the lists of available parts. Distributing this type of catalog, sometimes 1000 pages or more in volume, to all divisions of a manufacturer costs much and, in addition, requires the manufacturer to have a large storage space.
As the data processing technology has advanced, the method is now under study to prepare parts catalogs electronically and to supply them to manufacturers over wide-area networks such as the Internet. However, if this type of electronic catalog is created and distributed by each parts maker individually, manufacturers will find it confusing to read parts data whose format varies with the parts maker.
It is therefore desirable that parts makers provide electronic catalogs identical in data structure and data representation format. That is, electronic catalogs, if created by each parts maker according to a well-defined electronic catalog data structure standard, allow manufacturers, via a computer, to select parts from the electronic catalogs supplied by parts makers.
This need has led, for example, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) to start working on creating the standard for the structure of electronically-supplied data on products and parts. This data structure standard deals not only with parts properties but also with "selection conditions" which allow the user to calculate parts life time using property data or to include discount rate data to be applied to a customer who will purchase 1000 or more units at a time.
A "Selection condition" is knowledge used to select parts. For example, selection conditions for bearings include data on the basic load rating and the life time. Generally, the load rating is given as the numeric value of each part. On the other hand, the designer responsible forselecting parts calculates the lifetime according to the JIS(Japanese Industrial Standard)--defined lifetime calculation formula. The electronic catalog form, which is under study recently, electronically contains a lifetime calculation formula and, upon receiving a lifetime request, executes the lifetime calculation formula to extract parts within the required lifetime.
However, creating electronic catalog data in accordance with some specific standard requires that the user be familiar with the contents of the standard, meaning that, in many cases, it is difficult for each parts maker to study each standard and describe electronic catalog data directly.
In addition, describing selection conditions electronically is more difficult than describing them on paper because the data structures becomes more complicated.
Another problem is that the electronic catalog data structure standard drafted by ISO13584, for example, requires the user to specify data structure values using a special formats similar to that of character user interface commands. Thus, to create an electronic catalog, the user must understand the special format and system.